ART CITIES:Florence- John Currin
Displaying a sophisticated technique and a deep figurative culture, John Currin is renowned for his extremely elegant portraits and erotic scenes rendered with ironic, shameless realism. In his works, very often small paintings, Currin conceals his deep knowledge of art history and a very refined taste in representational composition.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Gallery Archive
John Currin’s exhibition “Paintings” at Museo Stefano Bardini, includes paintings never displayed in Italy and chosen by the artist and the curators to create an interaction with the wonderful collection of paintings and statues of the Museum, which is dedicated to Stefano Bardini, a Florentine antique dealer and collector of the 19th Century. Some drawings, too, are on display. With settings that are never ordinary and often tacitly sarcastic, and a selection of topics that stylistically and graphically also recall glossy and pornographic magazines, the American artist redefined contemporary portraiture. His interpretation of female eroticism and of the American bourgeois psychology, proves almost surreal or grotesque, extremely unsettling. But his criticism is never aggressive nor obvious, never grotesque nor garish. His figures, dressed or behaving like lesser characters of a romantic novel or impassive mannequins in a fashion shop, display zeal also when engaged in solitary or group sexual activities, showing signs and expressions of an unmistakable psychophysical alteration. The anatomy, disproportionate or displaying a distorted perspective, the faces’ expressions, everything modifies the ideal Renaissance representation of a female body and face. In this sense, his works follow on the heels of Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning rather than on those of John Singer Sargent or Edward Hopper. Within his work, Currin searches for and creates paradoxes, between real and fake, contemplation and voyeurism, obscene and refined, and photographic truth and figurative imagination. Never unpleasant, revolting and never predictable, Currin takes on different genres and styles, choosing and alternating different themes and modes, such as portraiture, still life, the obscene and indecent, the lyrical and sentimental.
Info: Curators: Antonella Nesi and Sergio Risaliti, Museo Stefano Bardini, Via dei Renai 1, Florence, Duration: 13/6-2/10/16, Days & Hours: Fri-Mon 11:00-17:00, http://musefirenze.it
